NEW ENGLAND CONFERENCE OF PUBLIC UTILIT IES COMMISSIONERS, INC. 50 Forest Falls Drive, Suite 6 Yarmouth. Maine 04096 - 6937 207.846.5440

Hon. Tim Woolf William M. Nugent President Executive Director 8 September 2010

Hon. Lisa P. Jackson, Administrator U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Air and Radiation Docket Mail Code 6102T 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, DC 20460 RE: Proposed Rule

– EPA Docket: OAR

- 2008

- 0708

EPA

- HQ

- OAR

- 2010 - 0295 Dear Adminis trator Jackson: The New England Conference of Public Utility Commissioners (“NECPUC”) appreciates the opportunity to comment on EPA’s proposed rule, National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (“NESHAPS”) for Reciprocating Internal Combustion Engines (the “Final Rule”), published in the Federal Register at 75 Fed. Reg. 9,648 (March 3, 2010). The comments herein focus on one major issue of concern to NECPUC: EPA’s revised definition for emergency demand response and a request that EPA reconsi der the italicized language below from § 63.6640(f)(4) of the Final Rule that limits engines used in emergency demand response (“DR”) programs to a maximum of 15 hours per year: The 50 hours per year for non

- emergency situations cannot be

used for peak s having or to generate income for a facility to supply power to an electric grid or otherwise supply power as part of a financial arrangement with another entity; except that owners and operators may operate the emergency engine for a maximum of 15 hours pe r year as part of a DR program if the regional transmission organization or equivalent balancing authority and transmission operator has determined there are emergency conditions that could lead to a potential electrical blackout, such as unusually low fre quency, equipment overload, capacity or energy deficiency, or unacceptable voltage level.NECPUC shares EPA’s concern that market rules should discourage the

operation of emergency generators to satisfy on

- peak demand unless emergency generation is neces sary to address a genuine system emergency. However, in the ISO New England (ISO

- NE) footprint, these resources are only activated in an attempt to maintain ten

- minute reserves during the late stages of a system emergency. ISO New England, Inc. Transmi ssion, Markets and Services Tariff, FERC Electric Tariff No.3, issued December 22, 2004. With respect to the need for emergency generation in genuine system emergencies (blackouts and brownouts), NECPUC believes that the current market rules and definitio ns that ISO

- NE has established, which provide strict and precise conditions, are stringent enough to adequately limit the use of emergency engines from purely financial endeavors. NECPUC urges EPA to consider adopting rules such as those currently in effe ct in New England through the ISO

- NE tariff, or allowing regions to set up their own rules that limit the use of emergency engines in such a way as to comply with the intent of the EPA’s proposed guidelines but without strictly limiting the number of hours of participation. NECPUC also is concerned that the case for making the proposed rule change is not definitive based on a review of various research reports. NECPUC would encourage EPA to review the report prepared by independent consultants, Synaps e Energy Economics, Inc., referenced in the Petition for Reconsideration filed by CPower, Inc. (“CPower”), EnergyConnect, Inc. (“EnergyConnect”), EnerNOC, Inc. (“EnerNOC”), and Innoventive Power, LLC (“Innoventive”) (collectively the “Companies”) that reached the conclusion that the availability of these resources can improve air quality when they are used to provide system reserves, under certain dispatch models. These dispatch scenarios would have emergency engines providing non

- spinning quick start res erves in place of old load

- following boilers providing spinning reserves through their operation at minimum load. NECPUC believes that these real

- time emergency generation resources are an integral part of the resource mix that displace the purchase of other types of capacity and play an integral role in maintaining system reliability. NECPUC respectfully submits these comments for EPA’s consideration in developing a final rule. We welcome further discussion on this issue and offer our assistance to EPA as work proceeds on development of a final rule. Sincerely, /s/ William M. Nugent, Executive Director